They have suffered at Manchester City this season.
While talk of crises and pressure on Pep Guardiola brings wry smiles to the faces of those who handle the levers of power at the Etihad – one executive at a rival club recalls a City official joking recently that being third in the Premier League was “his sort of disaster” – there’s no doubt they have been taken to some difficult places this year.
Acacio Santos is a Portuguese coach, a Uefa Pro licence holder and a high-level analyst with particular interest in the Catalan school of coaching. He has friends on the City coaching staff and visited the club’s training base last year, soaking in expertise and witnessing Guardiola’s work at first hand.
“Pep is a tough guy when they lose. Everyone feels it inside the club. It’s awful, but in a way that’s normal,” Santos tells The i Paper.
“The culture of the club, he wants everyone to feel it when they lose. It’s important to be that way because you have a responsibility at a club like that.
Pep Guardiola has endured a difficult season at Man City (Photo: Getty)“Of course it’s not as serious but imagine you’re at a hospital and you keep making mistakes. You need to analyse it, work out why it’s happening and put it right.”
That has proved harder than many thought. What started as an autumn aberration – a run of six defeats out of seven, beginning with an injury-hit defeat at Bournemouth – has extended into uncharacteristic uncertainty at the business end of the campaign.
Just as things had seemed to be back on track with a run of five successive wins, a listless draw at already-relegated Southampton last weekend prised open the debate about how he’s handled the first serious turbulence of his coaching career.
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“The complexity of Pep’s game perspective is high. His teams are like a Formula One engine, it’s complicated, intricate,” Santos says.
“If something’s not working in a Formula One engine it’s much more difficult to solve than a normal car engine. His strategy is complex and requires players to buy in completely and to be emotionally available. When confidence drops, that’s much harder.”
Santos points to two main things: City losing the control that Guardiola’s teams rely on. And then Guardiola trying to combat the problem by introducing more unpredictability and “individual actions” through Savinho and Jeremy Doku.
“People are trying to understand why he’d do that,” he says.
“It’s new for us. I have always loved Pep but growing up we thought he wasn’t human, he was an alien who never made mistakes. But now we know he can learn from things like the rest of us.”
Has some of his aura diminished? Guardiola has been bested (twice) by Arne Slot this season, lost twice to Carlo Ancelotti’s ailing Real Madrid and taken just a single (fortunate) point off Arsenal. By his own high standards, that represents a sort of failure. It can be difficult to recover that sheen of invincibility when it’s tarnished.
“It’s an unbelievable question really,” Ahsan Naeem, host of leading Manchester City podcast 93:20 tells The i Paper.
“If any other manager wins four on the bounce and does something no one else has done before in the history of English football and then finds themselves in a scrap for the top four, are they fighting for their job?
“People on the outside judge Guardiola on his own standards. That’s not fair because at some point there’s going to be a plateau or drop off.”
City certainly don’t have any doubts. When chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak sits down for his annual end-of-season video review next month, expect wholehearted backing for the Catalan, whatever happens at Wembley.
During talks over extending his contract, which few thought would happen this time last year, it was intimated that the job will be there for him as long as he wants it. And as hard as he has been on himself this season, he sounds re-energised by what are understood to be seriously ambitious transfer plans.
Meeting the representatives of Florian Wirtz, the Germany and Bayer Leverkusen attacking midfielder who has a £125m price tag, shows they are prepared to spend big to reclaim their title.
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They are heavily favoured in the race to sign Milan’s Tijjani Reijnders and are working on deal for Morgan Gibbs-White, the Nottingham Forest midfielder. There’s also the small matter of Rodri’s return.
Guardiola has become obsessed with the importance of player availability, to the point where any member of the squad who can’t play three times in a week is vulnerable. Could that, in theory, mean the likes of Bernardo Silva and Mateo Kovacic join Jack Grealish as a potential high-profile exit?
“Personally, I’m really excited because I have faith in the people running City,” Naeem says.
“We know the standards are the standards. They won’t be having conversations around another season of transition. It’ll be ‘How do we win the title again?’. That will require bringing in high-quality players who adapt quickly.
“I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the midfielders we’re being linked with, in the main, are not 18, 19, 20 years old. They’re 24, 25, 26 and at the peak of their careers.
“The demands Pep puts on midfield players, the club have probably realised he won’t trust an 18-year-old so there’s no point in giving him one. You need to give him players who drop straight into the team.
“I don’t think it’s the start of the downward spiral. To me it feels like the most exciting summer since 2017.”
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If that is the case, it has come after City’s most difficult season since Guardiola’s first, with the little matter of 115 charges still hanging over the club.
An FA Cup win changes the narrative significantly. While the feeling externally is that Palace want it more – and they are the undoubted choice of the neutral – City are hugely motivated for Wembley.
Exorcising the ghosts of last year’s no-show against Manchester United has been mentioned but the bigger picture is maintaining Guardiola’s incredible record of silverware. Given all they have been through, emerging from this season of struggle with a trophy might even top 2023’s Champions League win.
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